crust, singing “Hi! Ho! said Rolly!” as you ran down the last stretch to the steep drop, taking it
straight, then running the orchard in three turns and out across the ditch and onto the icy road
behind the inn. Knocking your bindings loose, kicking the skis free and leaning them up against
the wooden wall of the inn, the lamplight coming from the window, where inside, in the smoky,
new-wine smelling warmth, they were playing the accordion.
“Where did we stay in Paris?” he asked the woman who was sitting by him in a canvas chair,
now, in Africa.
“At the Crillon. You know that.”
“Why do I know that?”
“That’s where we always stayed.”
“No. Not always.”
“There and at the Pavillion Henri-Quatre in St. Germain. You said you loved it there.”
“Love is a dunghill,” said Harry. “And I’m the cock that gets on it to crow.”
“If you have to go away,” she said, “is it absolutely necessary to kill off everything you leave
behind? I mean do you have to take away everything? Do you have to kill your horse, and your wife
and burn your saddle and your armour?”
“Yes,” he said. “Your damned money was my armour. My Swift and my Armour.”
“Don’t.”
“All right. I’ll stop that. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“It’s a little bit late now.”
“All right then. I’ll go on hurting you. It’s more amusing. The only thing I ever really liked to do
with you I can’t do now.”
“No, that’s not true. You liked to do many things and everything you wanted to do I did.”
“Oh, for Christ sake stop bragging, will you?”
He looked at her and saw her crying.
“Listen,” he said. “Do you think that it is fun to do this? I don’t know why I’m doing it. It’s trying
to kill to keep yourself alive, I imagine. I was all right when we started talking. I didn’t mean to start
this, and now I’m crazy as a coot and being as cruel to you as I can be. Don’t pay any attention,
darling, to what I say. I love you, really. You know I love you. I’ve never loved any one else the way
I love you.”
He slipped into the familiar lie he made his bread and butter by.
“You’re sweet to me.”
“You bitch,” he said. “You rich bitch. That’s poetry. I’m full of poetry now. Rot and poetry.
Rotten poetry.”
“Stop it. Harry, why do you have to turn into a devil now?”
“I don’t like to leave anything,” the man said. “I don’t like to leave things behind.”
It was evening now and he had been asleep. The sun was gone behind the hill and there was a
shadow all across the plain and the small animals were feeding close to camp; quick dropping heads
and switching tails, he watched them keeping well out away from the bush now. The birds no longer
waited on the ground. They were all perched heavily in a tree. There were many more of them. His
personal boy was sitting by the bed.
“Memsahib’s gone to shoot,” the boy said. “Does Bwana want?”
“Nothing.”
She had gone to kill a piece of meat and, knowing how he liked to watch the game, she had gone
well away so she would not disturb this little pocket of the plain that he could see. She was always
thoughtful, he thought. On anything she knew about, or had read, or that she had ever heard.
It was not her fault that when he went to her he was already over. How could a woman know that
you meant nothing that you said; that you spoke only from habit and to be comfortable? After he no
longer meant what he said, his lies were more successful with women than when he had told them the
truth.
It was not so much that he lied as that there was no truth to tell. He had had his life and it was
over and then he went on living it again with different people and more money, with the best of the
same places, and some new ones.
You kept from thinking and it was all marvellous. You were equipped with good insides so that
you did not go to pieces that way, the way most of them had, and you made an attitude that you cared
nothing for the work you used to do, now that you could no longer do it. But, in yourself, you said that
you would write about these people; about the very rich; that you were really not of them but a spy in
their country; that you would leave it and write of it and for once it would be written by some one
who knew what he was writing of. But he would never do it, because each day of not writing, of
comfort, of being that which he despised, dulled his ability and softened his will to work so that,
finally, he did no work at all. The people he knew now were all much more comfortable when he did
not work. Africa was where he had been happiest in the good time of his life, so he had come out here
to start again. They had made this safari with the minimum of comfort. There was no hardship; but
there was no luxury and he had thought that he could get back into training that way. That in some way
he could work the fat off his soul the way a fighter went into the mountains to work and train in order
to bum it out of his body.
She had liked it. She said she loved it. She loved anything that was exciting, that involved a
change of scene, where there were new people and where things were pleasant. And he had felt the
illusion of returning strength of will to work. Now if this was how it ended, and he knew it was, he
must not turn like some snake biting itself because its back was broken. It wasn’t this woman’s fault.
If it had not been she it would have been another. If he lived by a lie he should try to die by it. He
heard a shot beyond the hill.
She shot very well this good, this rich bitch, this kindly caretaker and destroyer of his talent.
Nonsense. He had destroyed his talent himself. Why should he blame this woman because she kept
him well? He had destroyed his talent by not using it, by betrayals of himself and what he believed in,
by drinking so much that he blunted the edge of his perceptions, by laziness, by sloth, and by
snobbery, by pride and by prejudice, by hook and by crook. What was this? A catalogue of old
books? What was his talent anyway? It was a talent all right but instead of using it, he had traded on
it. It was never what he had done, but always what he could do. And he had chosen to make his living
with something else instead of a pen or a pencil. It was strange, too, wasn’t it, that when he fell in
love with another woman, that woman should always have more money than the last one? But when he
no longer was in love, when he was only lying, as to this woman, now, who had the most money of
all, who had all the money there was, who had had a husband and children, who had taken lovers and
been dissatisfied with them, and who loved him dearly as a writer, as a man, as a companion and as a
proud possession; it was strange that when he did not love her at all and was lying, that he should be
able to give her more for her money than when he had really loved.
We must all be cut out for what we do, he thought. However you make your living is where your
talent lies. He had sold vitality, in one form or another, all his life and when your affections are not
too involved you give much better value for the money. He had found that out but he would never
write that, now, either. No, he would not write that, although it was well worth writing.
Now she came in sight, walking across the open toward the camp. She was wearing jodphurs
and carrying her rifle. The two boys had a Tommie slung and they were coming along behind her. She
was still a good-looking woman, he thought, and she had a pleasant body. She had a great talent and
appreciation for the bed, she was not pretty, but he liked her face, she read enormously, liked to ride
and shoot and, certainly, she drank too much. Her husband had died when she was still a
comparatively young woman and for a while she had devoted herself to her two just-grown children,
who did not need her and were embarrassed at having her about, to her stable of horses, to books, and
to bottles. She liked to read in the evening before dinner and she drank Scotch and soda while she
read. By dinner she was fairly drunk and after a bottle of wine at dinner she was usually drunk enough
to sleep.
That was before the lovers. After she had the lovers she did not drink so much because she did
not have to be drunk to sleep. But the lovers bored her. She had been married to a man who had never
bored her and these people bored her very much.
Then one of her two children was killed in a plane crash and after that was over she did not want
the lovers, and drink being no anæsthetic she had to make another life. Suddenly, she had been acutely
frightened of being alone. But she wanted some one that she respected with her.
It had begun very simply. She liked what he wrote and she had always envied the life he led. She
thought he did exactly what he wanted to. The steps by which she had acquired him and the way in
which she had finally fallen in love with him were all part of a regular progression in which she had
built herself a new life and he had traded away what remained of his old life.
He had traded it for security, for comfort too, there was no denying that, and for what else? He
did not know. She would have bought him anything he wanted. He knew that. She was a damned nice
woman too. He would as soon be in bed with her as any one; rather with her, because she was richer,
because she was very pleasant and appreciative and because she never made scenes. And now this
life that she had built again was coming to a term because he had not used iodine two weeks ago when
a thorn had scratched his knee as they moved forward trying to photograph a herd of waterbuck
standing, their heads up, peering while their nostrils searched the air, their ears spread wide to hear
the first noise that would send them rushing into the bush. They had bolted, too, before he got the
picture.
Here she came now.
He turned his head on the cot to look toward her. “Hello,” he said.
“I shot a Tommy ram,” she told him. “He’ll make you good broth and I’ll have them mash some
potatoes with the Klim. How do you feel?”
“Much better.”
“Isn’t that lovely? You know I thought perhaps you would. You were sleeping when I left.”
“I had a good sleep. Did you walk far?”
“No. Just around behind the hill. I made quite a good shot on the Tommy.”
“You shoot marvellously, you know.”
“I love it. I’ve loved Africa. Really. If you’re all right it’s the most fun that I’ve ever had. You
don’t know the fun it’s been to shoot with you. I’ve loved the country.”
“I love it too.”
“Darling, you don’t know how marvellous it is to see you feeling better. I couldn’t stand it when
you felt that way. You won’t talk to me like that again, will you? Promise me?”
“No,” he said. “I don’t remember what I said.”
“You don’t have to destroy me. Do you? I’m only a middle-aged woman who loves you and
wants to do what you want to do. I’ve been destroyed two or three times already. You wouldn’t want
to destroy me again, would you?”
“I’d like to destroy you a few times in bed,” he said.
“Yes. That’s the good destruction. That’s the way we’re made to be destroyed. The plane will
be here tomorrow.”
“How do you know?”
“I’m sure. It’s bound to come. The boys have the wood all ready and the grass to make the
smudge. I went down and looked at it again today. There’s plenty of room to land and we have the
smudges ready at both ends.”
“What makes you think it will come tomorrow?”
“I’m sure it will. It’s overdue now. Then, in town, they will fix up your leg and then we will
have some good destruction. Not that dreadful talking kind.”
“Should we have a drink? The sun is down.”
“Do you think you should?”
“I’m having one.”
“We’ll have one together. Molo,
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